The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony which became a Carolingian "stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like them, speakers of West Germanic dialects, including both the Franks and Thuringians to the south, and the coastal Frisians, Angles and Danes to the north who were among the peoples who were originally referred to as "Saxons" in the context of early raiding and settlements in Roman Britain and Gaul. To their east were Obotrites and other Slavic-speaking peoples.
The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony (Latin: Antiqua Saxonia) which became a Carolingian "stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like them, speakers of West Germanic dialects, including both the Franks and Thuringians to the south, and the coastal Frisians, Angles and Danes to the north who were among the peoples who were originally referred to as "Saxons" in the context of early raiding and settlements in Roman Britain and Gaul. To their east were Obotrites and other Slavic-speaking peoples.
The political history of these continental Saxons is unclear until the 8th century and the conflict between their semi-legendary hero Widukind and the Frankish emperor Charlemagne. The earliest possible record is a single classical reference to Saxons north of the mouth of the Elbe in the second century AD, but the interpretation of this text ("Axones" in most surviving manuscripts) is disputed. For historians who accept this record, the original Saxon tribe lived close to the probable homeland of the Angles, in a region became part of Old Saxony under the name of Nordalbingia. The first undoubted usage of the term "Saxons" came centuries later, in the third to fifth centuries, when it was used for to coastal raiders who attacked the Roman Empire from north of the Rhine. However, scholars believe the term was then being used something like the much later term Viking, and was probably not a term for any specific tribe. These early raiders eventually included Frisians, Angles, and Jutes, as well as the Anglo-Saxons who became established in Britain.
The continental Saxons first appeared as inland opponents of the Franks in the sixth century, after Frankish victories over Thuringian and Warini kingdoms about which little is known. These Saxons do not appear to have been politically united until the generations of conflict leading up to their defeat by Charlemagne, before which they were reportedly ruled by regional "satraps". Frankish rulers of Austrasia, both Merovingian and Carolingian, fought numerous campaigns against Saxons, both in the west near the Lippe, Ems and Weser, and further east, near Thuringia and Bohemia, including the area which later medieval sources referred to as "North Swabia". Charlemagne conquered all the Saxons after winning the long Saxon Wars (772–804 AD) and forced them to convert to Christianity, annexing Saxony into the Carolingian domain. Under the Carolingian Franks Saxony became a single Stem duchy, fitting it within the basic political structure of the later Holy Roman Empire. The early rulers of this Duchy of Saxony expanded their territories—and therefore those of the Holy Roman Empire—to the east, at the expense of Slavic-speaking Wends.
Today the Saxons of Germany no longer form a distinctive ethnic group or country, but their name lives on in the names of several regions and states of Germany, including Lower Saxony (German: Niedersachsen) which includes most of the original duchy. Their language evolved into Low German which was the lingua franca of the Hanseatic League, but has faced a long and gradual decline since the Late Medieval period as a literary, administrative and, to a significant extent, cultural language in favor of Dutch and German.
The name of the Saxons
The name of the Saxons has traditionally been said to derive from a kind of knife used in this period and called a seax in Old English and sahs in Old High German. The term "Saxon" was first definitely used in written records to describe coastal raiders who attacked the Roman Empire from regions north of the Rhine using boats. At this time, the term had a similar sense to the much later term "Viking". These early raiders and settlers called Saxons included Frisians, Angles and Jutes, whose countries stretched from what is now the Netherlands to what is now Denmark, and included coastal parts of the territory which came to be called Saxony. It has been proposed that these coastal Saxons, who were strongly associated with the Anglo-Saxons of England, should be seen as distinct from the later Saxons of Carolingian times, although they were referred to by the same name, and were clearly related peoples. This has been compared to the later evolution of modern European terms referring to the "Dutch people" of the Netherlands, and the Deutschen, or Germans, of neighbouring Germany.
Significant numbers of these early Saxons settled within the empire, in what later became northern France and England. England, rather than Saxony, was sometimes written of as the Saxon homeland. To avoid confusion, later writers in the 8th century such as Bede and the author of the Ravenna Cosmography referred to the Saxons of Saxony in Germany as the "old Saxons", and their country as "old Saxony", and this differentiation is still often used by historians today when discussing this period. In contrast, the settlers once called Saxons in England became part of a new Old English-speaking nation, now commonly referred to as the Anglo-Saxons, or simply "the English". This brought together local Romano-British populations, Saxons, and other migrants from the same North Sea region, including Frisians, Jutes, and Angles. The Angles are the source of the term "English" which became the more commonly used collective term. The term "Anglo-Saxon", combining the names of the Angles and the Saxons, also came into use by the 8th century, initially in the work of Paul the Deacon, to distinguish the Germanic-speaking inhabitants of Britain from continental Saxons. However, both the Saxons of Britain and those of Old Saxony in northern Germany long continued to be referred to as "Saxons" in an indiscriminate manner.
History
Possible mention in Ptolemy (2nd century AD)
Ptolemy's Geographia, written in the 2nd century, is sometimes considered to contain the first mention of the Saxons. Some copies of this text mention a tribe called Saxones in the area just to the north of the lower Elbe, and there were also three islands north of the Elbe's mouth which were called the Saxon islands. However, other versions refer to the same tribe as Axones. Some scholars such as Mathias Springer have proposed that this may be a misspelling of the tribe that Tacitus in his Germania called Aviones. According to this theory, Saxones was the result of later scribes trying to correct a name that meant nothing to them. On the other hand, Schütte, in his analysis of such problems in Ptolemy's Maps of Northern Europe, believed that Saxones is correct. He notes that the loss of first letters occurs in numerous places in various copies of Ptolemy's work, and also that the manuscripts without Saxones are generally inferior overall. According to Liccardo "Even though the reference is found in a section of the Geographia difficult to interpret, the scholarly consensus considers this passage to be genuine".
For the majority of scholars who accept the existence of Saxons in Ptolemy, their reappearance as a much more important and widespread people in third century records is nonetheless remarkable.
Saxon raiders (3rd and 4th centuries)
The first clear and undisputed contemporary uses of the Saxon name come from the 4th century, but some of these refer to events in the 3rd century. After Ptolemy, the next oldest mention of the Saxons is the Laterculus Veronensis from about 314 AD, which mentions the Saxons in a list of barbarian peoples outside the empire, who had flourished under its hegemony. Within this list they are clearly distinguished from neighbouring groups including the Chamavi and Franci. In contrast, the term Saxon does not appear in any of the 3rd century Latin panegyrics.
Eutropius, a 4th-century Roman historian, claimed that Saxon and Frankish raiders had attacked the North Sea coast near Boulogne-sur-Mer in about 285, when Carausius was posted there to defend against them. However, it is very likely that Saxon was a new term he was using anachronistically. Some of the Panegyrici Latini were written soon after those events, but they instead mention Franks, Chamavi and Frisians, and not Saxons. The panegyrics indicated that these and possibly others entered the Rhine and Scheldt deltas within the empire and held control of it for decades. They imply that the Chamavi and Frisians were seen as types of Franks at this time, rather than Saxons. The area was brought under Roman governance by Constantius Chlorus, who settled many of the conquered in underpopulated parts of Gaul. Constantius also eventually defeated the rebel Carausius in Britain, and his Roman forces are said to have slaughtered barbarian mercenaries there and "those who lately imitated the barbarian in their mode of dress and flowing red hair".
It is not clear when the Roman military structure known as the Litus Saxonicum ('Saxon Shore') was first built or referred to with this name. It was composed of nine forts stretching around the south-eastern corner of England. On the other side of the English Channel two coastal military commands were created, over the Tractus Armoricanus in what is now Brittany and Normandy, and the coast of Belgica Secunda in what later became Flanders and Picardy. The Notitia Dignitatum of about 400 shows that it existed by that time and also lists the existence of a Saxon military unit (an Ala) in the Roman military, which was stationed in what is now Lebanon and northern Israel. This Ala primum Saxonum already existed by 363 when Julian used them in Arabia against the Persian empire. Roman military accessories are found in northern Germany in the 4th and 5th centuries apparently indicating the return of soldiers who had served the empire.
Before becoming emperor himself, Julian the Apostate mentioned the Saxons in a speech as close allies of the rebel emperor Magnentius in 350. Julian described the Saxons and Franks as kinsmen of Magnentius, living "beyond the Rhine and on the shores of the western sea". In 357/8, Julian apparently came into conflict with Saxons when he campaigned in the Rhine regions against Alemanni, Franks, and Saxons. The late 5th-century historian Zosimus reported the involvement of the Saxons, "who exceed all the barbarians in those regions, in courage, strength and hardiness". They sent out, according to Zosimus, the "Quadi", a part of the Saxons, against the Roman lands, but they were blocked by the Franks who resided near them. These "Quadi" therefore used boats to get around the Franks, and made it to Batavia (Betuwe) in the Rhine delta. Scholars generally believe the name "Quadi" to be a mistake, perhaps by a copyist. Based upon other more contemporary reports of these campaigns, it appears that he was referring to the Chamavi, who were however normally listed as Franks. This implies that the term "Saxon" was probably not a clear ethnic distinction at this time, but perhaps rather designated groups who attacked by boat.
Several more records mentioning 4th-century Saxons can be dated:
The 4th-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus (books 26 and 27) reports that Britain was troubled by the Scoti, two tribes of Picts (the Dicalydones and Verturiones), the Attacotti and the Saxons. Roman officer Count Theodosius led a successful campaign to recover control in Britain. In an inscription preserved in Stobi in North Macedonia, Theodosius is described as the terror of Saxony. This is the earliest known reference to a country of the Saxons apart from the disputed mention by Ptolemy, but this Saxony might have been in Britain. A poetic account of his battle with the Saxons even associates this conflict with the "Orcades", possibly the Orkney islands off Scotland, but it also associates the Picts with "Thule" and Theodosius probably also battled Saxons in the Rhine delta region.
In Gaul in 370 (Ammianus, books 28 and 30), the Saxons "overcoming the dangers of the Ocean advanced at rapid pace towards the Roman frontier" invading the maritime districts in Gaul. Emperor Valentinian's forces tricked and overwhelmed them, by a "device which was treacherous but expedient", "and stripped of their booty the robbers thus forcibly crushed had almost returned enriched with the spoils which they took".
In 373, Saxons were defeated at a place called Deuso which was in Frankish, but not Roman territory. This was therefore probably an early mention of an inland force of Saxons.
Not long before Emperor Magnus Maximus died in 388, according to Bishop Ambrose of Milan, he was attacked by Franks and Saxons as divine retribution for his rebuilding of a synagogue that was burned-down in Rome.
In 393, Saxons died as gladiators in Rome.
In many cases, the Saxons were associated with using boats for their raids, although the first mentions also involve attacks within the Rhine-Maas delta region. Special mentions of the fearful 4th-century Saxon coastal surprise attacks were made not only by Ammianus, but also by the poet Claudian.
An early rough mention of a country of continental Saxons north of the Rhine was given by Hilarion (291-371), who says that the Frankish homeland lay between the Saxons and Alemanni, therefore placing them north of the Franks.
5th century
In the 5th century, the records mentioning Saxons mainly link them with Britain and Gaul. It is likely that the term Saxon was still mainly being used to describe northern raiders in general, and not a specific people. The reputation for shocking coastal raids continued. In the late 5th century a dramatic description of Saxon raiding was written by Sidonius Apollinaris writing to a friend who was assigned to a coastal defensive post in Saintonge near Bordeaux.
Writing in the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century, Procopius describes only three large nations living in "Brittia", Angles, Frisians, and Britons, and he does not mention Saxons at all. Between the Rhine and southern Denmark Procopius believed there was a kingdom of the Warini.
Early in the fifth century it is believed that the Roman general Stilicho campaigned in Britain and northern Gaul and reorganized the defences against the Saxons. Later in his career a series of crises in Italy, Gaul, Iberia and North Africa meant that military resources were not available for Britain. According to the Chronica Gallica of 452, which was probably written in present day southern France, Britain was ravaged by Saxon invaders in 409 or 410. The Romano-British citizens reportedly expelled their Roman officials during this period and never again re-joined the Roman Empire. Procopius states that after the overthrow of Constantine III in 411, "the Romans never succeeded in recovering Britain, but it remained from that time under tyrants."